Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Occasionally I write a bit here and there about some of the interesting...or maybe not so interesting, background of my heritage. Most of these items are tidbits that my older brother has actually been researching and was gracious enough to pass down the line.

Well, here is our North Carolina link in our family. They lived around1760, near Charlotte, North Carolina. They were farmers. According the records we know of, they were active in buying and selling large tracts of farm land.

The Scotch-Irish were not particularly fond of the English and were irregular soldiers during the Revolutionary War. They were part of defeating Lord Cornwallis' British Army like the Battle of King Mountain and also in minor skirmishes like the ambush at McIntyre's Farm.

Times were a bit rough after the Revolutionary War though for the next 25 or so years; farms were foreclosing; and our ancestors packed up and headed out west to the fertile, cheap land of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana.

Our earliest official documented and directly related McIntyre relative that we have been able to find so far is that of John McIntire, who was born in Lincoln County, North Carolina, near Charlotte, 1797. We know that he was at least a third generation Scotch-Irish Colonial, but have no definitive records of siblings or his parents. We DO know that there were several McIntire families living in the area at the time.

Patoka River, Indiana

John left North Carolina to Louisville, Kentucky, which was nothing more than a frontier settlement, just across from Indiana. At the age of 25, he married Margaret Day, who was born in Indiana. Their son was William, born in 1824 in Kentucky. Shortly after, they had built a farm near the Pakota River in southern Indiana where three more sons were born: Edward in 1828, Lawson in 1830, and Anthony in 1833. Lawson McIntyre is whom I am descended from.

McNairy County, Tennessee

They farmed there for about 10 years before relocating to the community of Purdy in McNairy County, Tennessee, near the Mississippi border. Some of their North Carolina relatives were already living in the area and, no doubt, encouraged the relocation.

Such is the little that we know about our first known McIntyre relatives. These were on the paternal side of my family. My grandmother's maiden name was Vaughn and we can trace her relatives as far back as Jamestown. What little we know about them is that her great great great great (I think that's all the greats) grandparents lived in Jamestown, most likely as indentured servants.